DEMOPOLIS-Demopolis’ local Christian Rock band “Five Shades Red” competed in the Erie Finals of the Kingdom Bound International Talent Search in Erie, Pennsylvania on Friday night and won third place out of the six finalists.

Band members Daniel Atkins, 19 (lead singer), Josh Barnes, 19 (guitar), Bryan Yeager, 17 (guitar), Clark Pickel, 18 (bass), and Shane Pezent, 29 (drums) traveled to Erie to go and make a name for themselves and to give them a taste of the real music scene.

“Thanks to our families, friends and fans, we are not only just going to compete in Pennsylvania, but we were the top vote getters of the competition,” Atkins said.

The band left for Erie on Wednesday, but not without an obstacle standing in the way of wrecking the whole trip. When Pezent made the reservation for the rental car because he’s over 21, well when they went to pickup the rental car without Pezent the company wouldn’t allow them to have the car.

Pickel said they ended up having to take Pezent’s truck and Barnes’ mother’s car on the long 915-mile journey. He said they really enjoyed the trip up and are not looking forward to making it back down.

“I was lucky because I got to fly out instead of driving,” Pickel said.

Once everyone made it to Erie, the band really enjoyed playing in the competition as much as they enjoyed listening to the other bands. Pickel said the band that won first place in the contest was “Faded Me” from Ohio and they were really good.

“We enjoyed sitting backstage listening to them play and when it was our turn, we wanted them to keep playing, it really got us pumped up to go out there and show the crowd what we could do,” Pickel said.

He said they played three songs on the night including Average Joe, None the less, and Tangent. He also said there were about 200 people in attendance and that they really seemed to enjoy their music.

“The producer of the contest approached us after the contest and he told us we wanted to have us lay some tracks down for him in a studio,” Pickel said.

The band won third place, which was tickets to the festival called Kingdom Bound. The band decided to offer their prize to the person that made the highest donation during the night’s activities.